Q) How Can We Become Enlightened?

• A) It is as simple as 1, 2, 3
• 1. Start meditating
• 2. Continue meditating
• 3. Continue meditating

Meditation is the only key to experience that you are enlightened. Start with some meditation technique and surely you will see the Ultimate Truth. Even though you don't believe you are a lion, you are a lion.

Q) Do we need to follow some specific steps, like yama, niyama?

A) Yama and niyama are two of the eight parts of ashtanga yoga. With yama and niyama, even after death, you won't be convinced you did it perfectly. They are nice techniques for you and the Master to escape! For example, if you ask the Master, 'Why am I not yet enlightened?', the Master can tell you, 'Because you did not practice yama and niyama properly.' And you can convince yourself of the same too. Yama and niyama are nice methods to postpone your enlightenment. According to my experience, for the modernday man, yama and niyama will happen after he becomes enlightened, not before. For the man of yesteryear, who was not so complex in mind, these things would have been easy to follow, and, also, it was created for this type of man. With the evolution of man, the techniques, too, need to be updated.

Tell me, can you be completely, honestly, truthful? The first rule is ahimsa (non-violence), then asteya (not stealing), satya (truth), aparigraha (living with minimal things), and finally brahmacharya (celibacy). I have seen thousands of yogis but I have not met a single yogi who has accomplished all this and then gone to meditation. Patanjali says ashtanga yoga means 'eight parts of yoga', not eight steps. So, all eight parts should be practiced at a time, not one after the other. That is possible and happens automatically only if you are enlightened.

Q) How do you release doubt, even doubts about Self?

A) Surrender to the Divine saying, 'You are the one who gave me belief and doubt; you keep both and let me be free.'

A part of you believes in you and a part of you has doubts about you. Surrender the doubt and faith to the Divine. You want to keep only belief but leave the doubt; that's where the trouble begins. Surrender both; only then you will go beyond both. That is the only way for doubts to disappear.

Q) You said we don't need conscience. A serial killer has no conscience. How do you explain that?

A) I never said you don't need conscience. You have taken one part of what I said as the whole thing. No! A man who has real consciousness can't hurt or kill others, because he feels others as an extension of himself. A person with a

conscience may not kill with a knife but he will kill with words because his being will be violent. With conscience, you may be socially non-violent but, with consciousness, your being itself will be non-violent. What I meant was, morality should be based on consciousness and not on conscience.

A serial killer has no consciousness, which is why he does what he does. When he does not have consciousness, he should have, at least, a conscience or else he will be what he is. The fact that he does not abide by societal rules, what religion and moral studies would term as conscience, is only a secondary issue arising out of the first. If he had consciousness of his existence, he would be aware that he is the same as every other being and would not harm another being.

Conscience is a poor substitute for consciousness. In the meditation program , I help people to get at least one glimpse of deep consciousness, so they can start living with consciousness instead of conscience. Anything based on conscience is skin deep; it is not eternal, but anything based on consciousness is eternal. We should work for conscious experience. Just because we don't have any conscious experience, we should not compromise with conscience. Our morality, understanding, lifestyle, everything, should be based on consciousness. When it is based on conscience, it is based on fear and greed.

-A small story:

One man was very depressed and went to the church to see the Father. He went up to him and asked him, 'Father, I want some guidance from you. My conscience is bothering me.' The Father looked at him kindly and asked, 'Do you want to know how to strengthen your conscience?' The man replied, 'No, I want to know how to weaken it.'

This is what will happen to us if we are under the compulsion of our conscience!

For example, if the idea that you should not speed is based on fear, when you don't see a cop around, you will speed up. This is what happens when things are conscience based. It becomes tasty to break laws and you feel good about doing it too! Whenever anything is followed because of fear and greed, you will be waiting for a chance to break the rules. Kids saying 'No' to parents has a similar underlying basis. Children feel they have proved themselves when they say 'No'. When they miss school, when they break a rule, they feel good. The compulsion to be under a conscience causes these things to happen. Consciousness, on the other hand, does not give rise to any compulsion. It only liberates.

• -Another small story: The class teacher asked one boy in class, 'Tell me, do you use bad words?' The boy replied, 'No.' Then the teacher asked, 'Do you disobey your parents?' The boy said, 'No.' The teacher asked, 'Then what do you do that is naughty?' The boy said, 'I tell lies.'

When children are brought up under the compulsion of conscience alone, they start revelling in flouting their own conscience. To start with, you need to introduce conscience to them or else they will become loose in virtues but it should slowly be replaced with consciousness. Only then they will fall into the right track.